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Heartbreaking news, and a demonstration of the limit of remote-control warfare. The US drone program in Pakistan inadvertently killed two Western hostages being held by al-Qaeda, including an American whose family had repeatedly appealed for his release based on his age and health: A U.S. drone strike in January targeting a suspected al Qaeda compound in Pakistan inadvertently killed an American and Italian being held hostage by the group, senior Obama administration officials said.The killing of American development expert Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto is the first known instance in which the U.S. has accidentally...

Can the president kill you? The short answer is: Yes, but not legally. Yet, President Obama has established a secret process that involves officials from the Departments of Justice and Defense, the CIA, and the White House senior staff whereby candidates are proposed for execution, and the collective wisdom of the officials then recommends execution to the president, who then accepts or rejects the recommendation. If the recommendation is to kill and the president rejects the recommendation, the CIA is directed to arrest the person. If the president accepts the recommendation to kill, then death is ordered. This is not...

Click here for video. King Kong's got nothing on her. A chimp being filmed by a drone for a television show based out of a zoo in the Netherlands decided she wasn't too keen on the invasion of privacy and swatted the drone from the sky, but the finished film was "special" nonetheless, according to the zoo. When a drone hovered over the chimpanzee exhibit at Burger's Zoo, while filming "Burgers' Zoo Natuurlijk" Friday, "the intelligent primates immediately discovered the spying little plane and right away armed themselves with long sticks against this inquisitive electronic intruder," the zoo's website said....

First they supplanted secretaries, factory workers and store clerks. Now robots are setting their sensors on one of the world’s oldest jobs: herding sheep. Michael Thomson says his homemade drone is the fastest way to move the roughly 1,000 sheep on his sister’s spread in Dannevirke, New Zealand, to greener pastures. Workers on the 200-acre ranch typically have used horses or all-terrain vehicles to herd the animals and check on their condition. Those all are tasks his quadcopter, a helicopter with four rotors, can do in a fraction of the time, says Mr. Thomson, 22 years old. “There are limitations,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department says it can find only four emails sent between former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and her staff concerning drone strikes and certain U.S. surveillance programs, and those notes have little to do with either subject. She asks for a phone call in one, a phone number in another. She seeks advice on .. information leaks, and accidentally replies .. about decorations. The messages also reveal Clinton used an iPad to email while secretary of state .. The four emails were obtained by The Associated Press under a 2013 Freedom of Information Act request ..

VANCOUVER – Spurned by U.S. regulators, Amazon.com has turned to the one country where flying delivery robots are still welcome: Canada. On Monday, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper revealed that the online retail giant is testing its latest prototypes for package-carrying drones at a top-secret site in British Columbia. “We are rapidly experimenting and iterating on Amazon Prime Air … including outdoors at a rural test site in Canada,” wrote Amazon spokesperson Kristen Kish in an email to the National Post. --- Located a mere 600 metres from the U.S. border, the Canadian testing grounds fulfill a lingering threat by Amazon...

The CIA official who led the hunt for Osama Bin Laden is being removed from his post, it has been revealed. The head of the agency's Counter­terrorism Center, who also directed drone campaigns which killed thousands, has been in the position for nine years and is described as a 'true hero'.

The U.S. has removed all remaining personnel from Yemen as Shiite rebels controlling the country’s capital called for others to join its battle against government forces. The State Department said in a statement it is removing personnel due to the “deteriorating security situation” in the country. The State Department also said it will continue to engage the Yemeni people and international community to support the country’s political transition. […] The U.N. Security Council has called for an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Yemen as well. The closed-door meeting is expected to take place Sunday. …

Share on email View Comments Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (left) shows off Amazon PrimeAir drones to Charlie Rose of CBS News. (CBS) Related Tags:Amazon, Delivery, Drone, FAA, Magid Larry Magid Larry Magid is a technology journalist and an Internet safe...Read More You've Earned Points for Reading!Claim points in our Reward Center, and earn more tomorrow. San Francisco (KCBS) —  Amazon scored a victory this week in its battle with government regulators over their plan to deliver products by drone.The FAA has agreed to let the company fly Amazon Prime Air Drones… but with some big restrictions.  One of those restrictions...

Amateur drone hobbyists, beware! If you happen to make one red cent from any video filmed with your small drone – or if Uncle Sam thinks you are -- you might soon receive an unwelcome notice in the mail or an ominous visitor at your door. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is cracking down on what it deems to be “commercial use” of drones or “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” (UAVs), as it prefers to call them. The agency is turning amateur hobbyists and small business owners into potential outlaws should they ignore the FAA’s demands to “cease and desist” from operating...

It was a typical little news story on Washington’s drone wars -- six paragraphs from Yemen, the sort of minimalist report that, in these years, has also regularly come out of Pakistan or even, from time to time, Somalia. “A U.S. drone attack in Yemen killed four suspected al-Qaeda militants on Saturday in the southern province of Shabwa, local Yemeni security officials told Reuters.” Who those “militants” really were we seldom know; there’s rarely follow-up in the mainstream media. It’s just another barely noticed mini-triumph in Washington’s ongoing “covert” drone wars in the Greater Middle East. Those wars have been...

Drones have been seen flying over several sensitive landmarks in Paris in a night-time mystery that French police say is being taken seriously. At least five of the unmanned aerial machines were spotted between midnight on Monday and 0600 on Tuesday, and none of the operators has been caught. The first appeared over the US embassy and there were later sightings near the Eiffel Tower and Place de la Concorde. French police believe the drone flights could be linked. Small drones are easy to buy but their appearance in recent months over sensitive locations has worried French authorities.

When people discuss business uses for drones, they tend to jump to the novelty end of the consumer market—from the drone hobbyist with a GoPro camera to a complete overhaul of delivery services. “In the press, you always hear that Amazon will deliver a book, or pizzas will come to your house,” says Amar Hanspal, senior vice president at Autodesk, during a recent discussion on drones at Gigaom Structure Connect. “That is a cute thing to talk about, but the real action is in B2B industrial applications. That is where we’re watching the democratization of a broad use of drones...

YORK --- A woman in York called law enforcement last week to report a very unusual peeping tom. The woman told the York County Sheriff's Office she woke up around 2 a.m. on Feb. 11, and saw a light outside her window on Lomita Road. When she got up to investigate, she saw that the light was attached to what the incident report describes as a flying "drone." The drone then flew away from the woman's home toward a Duke Energy building. By the time the woman contacted sheriff's deputies on Monday, she said she had already contacted Duke as...

Drone on, the government says. Just not through the night sky. Or close to an airport. Or out of the operator's sight. And probably not winging its way with a pizza or package, any time soon. Long-anticipated rules proposed Sunday will open an era in which small (under 55 pounds) commercial unmanned aircraft perform routine tasks — crop monitoring, aerial photography, inspections of bridges and cell towers, and much more. But not right away. Final rules are probably two to three years away.

A newly leaked document by the Federal Aviation Administration may offer a first look at upcoming regulations for drones, and the laws discussed appear to be somewhat favorable for photographers who fly camera drones.

Drone-safety debates have inflamed after a pilot reported having a close encounter with a remote-controlled device at 4,000 feet while navigating a Southwest Airlines flightto LAX. The plane was making its final descent into the Los Angeles airport Sunday when the pilot reported the close call, according to audio obtained by NBC News:

Twice authorities have intercepted drones being used to deliver contraband into prisons, leaving German states planning new ways of keeping criminal activity away from criminals. But is the law behind the curve on this new technology? The justice ministry in Lower Saxony said that in future it might deploy so-called “drone-trackers”—devices equipped with infrared, night vision and sometimes even radar—at prisons. “We’re aware of this problem and are keeping an eye on it,” said Lower Saxony justice minister Antje Niewisch-Lennartz. Drones have only recently appeared on governments’ radars. At the end of January, a drone carrying a package containing a...

The Obama administration earlier this year turned down a request from Jordan for Predator spy drones that would help it locate targets in the war against the Islamic State. The refusal, disclosed by a House Armed Services Committee, member, is gaining importance today since Jordan has emerged as a critical player in a U.S.-led coalition to destroy the terror group. On Tuesday, the Islamic State released a video of its execution by fire of a capture Jordanian pilot. Jordan retaliated on Thursdaywith F-16 air strikes on the Syrian town of Raqqa and is vowing a relentless war against the Islamic...

A Chinese drone maker which created the small quadcopter that recently crashed on White House grounds said Wednesday it is updating its drones to prohibit flight over the US capital.